1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a drive video recording device and system that records a drive video showing the surrounding environment of a vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
In JP-A-2011-146860, a device is described that is capable of playing back images captured by an on-board camera such that images having a low priority of necessity for a user are skipped. Therefore, in the device described in JP-A-2011-146860, the acquired image data is stored in an image storage device. In addition, as information serving as reference for skipping parts of and displaying the stored image data in a display device, information (such as brake pedal force, accelerator pedal force, vehicle speed, steering angle, front/back acceleration, and lateral acceleration) correlated with the time at which the images have been captured is also stored in the storage device.
When the images are played back, information at a skip-start time set by the user by a setting switch and subsequent pieces of information are successively compared, starting with the pieces of information closest to the information at the skip-start time in terms of time. The degrees of similarity are calculated. The image data stored in the storage device is displayed in the display device such that the images are skipped until the degree of similarity reaches a predetermined threshold or below, based on the calculation results for the degree of similarity.
In addition, in JP-A-2009-246503, a device is described that correlates a video captured during a drive route with map information, and stores the video and map information as a summary of the video. The device enables the video to be checked as necessary. Specifically, when the change in traveling direction of the vehicle is a predetermined amount or greater, or when a road sign containing characters or symbols set in advance is detected in a drive video captured by an on-board camera, the relevant drive video is extracted from a drive video that is being constantly recorded. The extracted drive video is then stored in a storage section together with the name of the location and coordinate information composed of the latitude and longitude. Then, when an instruction for summary display is given, a composite image combining the map information to the destination of the vehicle and a plurality of stored videos is displayed.
The device in JP-A-2011-146860 is capable of playing back images such that images having a low degree of necessity for a user are skipped. Therefore, when the user checks the necessary image data, the recorded image data is not required to be played back over a long period of time. However, in this device, the image data acquired by the on-board camera is stored directly into the image storage device. Therefore, a memory having a large storage capacity is required to be used as the image storage device. Furthermore, a problem occurs in that the amount of time over which image data can be recorded is limited to a relatively short amount of time.
In this respect, in the device in JP-A-2009-246503, only the drive video of an instance in which a predetermined condition is met is extracted and stored. Therefore, the storage capacity required for recording the drive video can be reduced. However, on the other hand, drive videos other than those of instances in which predetermined conditions are met are deleted without being stored. Therefore, the state of the overall vehicle travel cannot be checked through the drive video.
Therefore, a drive video recording device and system are desired that are capable of allowing the state of the overall vehicle travel to be checked through a drive video and capable of reducing the storage capacity required for recording the drive video from that required in the past.